


Counting Birds Against The Sun

by a_felidae



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25199635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_felidae/pseuds/a_felidae
Summary: Cole's attempts at helping the Herald, despite the mark making it hard to see.
Relationships: Cole & Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Cole & Lavellan
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

He had been drawn to Haven immediately after the Conclave. So many people in pain, in need of help.  
Two Hands, Left and Right. Both were left, yet stayed, severed but still holding on. The one he'd seen back at the White Spire had seen him in return.  
She recognized, remembered, re-evaluated him. Her on edge and an edge on her blade.  
He made her forget so he could move freely, slipping from one person to the next as easily as he slipped from their memories. Searching, soothing, struggling to make a difference.  
Beneath the tear in the sky, his efforts were lost like a tear in the ocean.

He didn't notice _her_ at first. She was more of a silhouette, a shadow, than anything else.  
No depth. No colour. Her mind in the fade, masked by the mark. Its song shrouded her soul the same way its light, blindingly bright, swallowed her palm from view.  
He had gone to see her only to find out if she was what people thought – either guilty or godsend. Both could have been used to help people in some way. She seemed to be neither.

One who aspired godhood had tried to harness the power of one who had refused it, and she had simply got caught in the middle.   
She did not hold his interest. At first.  
He felt it though when she calmed the Breach. It still hurt, but it was steady now, the pain constant instead of growing. Not just for the spirits. It lessened so much pain among the people as well.   
He decided to follow her then.  
He wanted to help her help others. And he wanted to help her. That was the hard part.

He could see her. So, he knew she needed him. He couldn't see clearly though. Only the emotions she felt strongest could pierce that veil unhindered. The others were indistinct, hard to make out. He tried. Again, and again.  
If someone had asked him, he would have compared it to counting birds – or making out someone's face – against the sun.  
The colours were off. Too bright on the hair, like a halo. Flat and faint on the face.  
You had to watch and wait. For some new detail to catch and add to the picture when someone shed some light the other way.

So, he was glad for every person she came into contact with, every opportunity to scratch the surface of this cocoon the mark had wrapped her in. It was the only thing that helped him see, someone else's hurt touching hers, and he snatched up every glimpse he could get. The more these hurts were aligned, the clearer was the reading he got on her, yet it only ever lasted so long as the other person was hurting.  
It left him in a bit of a bind. He couldn't help if he couldn't see, and yet he could no longer see if he helped. Those hurts, he finally decided, would have to wait until he had looked his fill.

Unable to see into her any other way, he strayed to the very edges of these spaces illuminated by others, where the shadows deepened into darkness, and dragged as much out of the depth of her mind and memories as possible.  
If the light was someone's hurt touching hers, then the shadows around were her own hurt touching some other hurt of hers.

Like when Adan, the alchemist, regretted leaving his notes on her treatment lying around. It pained him to think that she had read them. He had never claimed to have good bedside manners, but even he knew to keep some things to himself.  
It pained her to have read them, too, the words painting an abstract picture of mistrust and menace. Before, she had suspected that people had wanted her dead, but now she knew for certain.  
This was the spot were Adan's hurt connected with hers.

Yet tugging on that single strand he found it tangled with so many others. Beings that had wanted to hurt her or her clan in the past, that might do so in the future, that she feared. Spirits. Darkspawn. Spiders big as people. People in general, mostly humans. Templars in particular. And one sailor especially, that had tried to throw her overboard on the way from Ostwick to Denerim.  
It kept her from sleep, hurting, haunted, haggard.

He had tried talking to her about it.  
“Cold sea. Cruel wind. Screaming in your ears. Salt stinging your eyes. The storm was bad, but this is worse. It burns so bright, blessing and burden. An anchor that holds you here, drags you down to drown in a sea of shem. It makes you Herald, but it doesn’t make for safe Haven. I will.”  
But she had been too scared to listen, and he could not tell if it was because he looked like a human, or acted like a spirit, or both. He had taken back the words, tried others.

"The storm kept you from sleep. First the howling, then the hounding. Half awake, holding off ever since."  
Her face grew confused, then concerned, then contorted into a mask of composure, the fear flaring behind her eyes so strongly he could feel it despite the mark.  
"How can you know about that? You can't know that, unless... get out! Out of my head! Out!"  
He’d failed again and made her forget again.

And again:  
"Scared of spirits, scared for your soul. You caged that fear, like a black bird, bound to serve. Keep you alert. Even asleep your mind is wide awake. This new fear is running wild, can't be caught, can't be caged. You did not think they could watch over you, did not think your body needs watching. Now that you do, they no longer can. I can watch over you."  
"Get out!"

He needed to know more.  
He tried so hard. Mapping her mind and heart as best as he could.  
Yet she kept eluding him. With every detail he added, painting a clearer picture in his head, he tried to talk to her, only to find that it had not yet been enough. Had anyone else been able to look at these recollections he held, he doubted they would have been able to recognize her from it. Too vague, too disconnected.

There was Minaeve, the creature researcher, who revealed that she had been born among the Dalish and cast out when she had shown magical talent. Her hurt was old, faded, barely shedding any light, and badly aligned at that. While both women hurt about leaving their clans, one had been forced out and did not look back, while the other had done so on her own, on their behalf, and hoped to return. Yet there was another hurt they shared, the yearning for home, and even if for Minaeve it was the Circle instead of the clan, it shed another light in the same spot.

He spoke to her again, dared to suggest something:  
"Home is not, no more, never again, a place. It's people. So, you can pack up and leave, without leaving home behind. Yet you have. You left them. You need to make yourself at home here."  
She sent him away. She did not, could not, feel at home among the people of Haven, for they were not of the people.  
Cole tried a different angle this time, to get her to explain what he could not see.

“Smell of oakmoss. Spells woven into wood. Sails snapping to no avail. They’re for shelter, not speed. Wind and water won’t carry your ships forward. Only the ones who guide you. You gave all that up. Traded it in. Your hahren for humans. Your halla for horses. Your home for hurt. If you think this is right, why does it feel so wrong?”  
Those words were wrong, too.

It was even worse when he tried to touch the subject of magic among the Dalish. He did not try that again. Talking to people about their deepest hurts was hard enough when he could see them clearly, when he could not, it only did more harm.  
At first, he thought him being a spirit was the problem. The keeper had warned her from engaging spirits, so she cut him off again and again. Somehow, trying to make it better seemed to make it worse. So, he made it like he hadn't been there, made her forget over and over. Start again. Try. Do better next time.  
He somehow botched that up as well and did not even realize it at first.

The timespan from the missing memories scared her. She thought something was wrong. Perhaps the mark affected her in more ways than she knew. She still had no recollection of what happened at the conclave. She thought it was getting worse. Was she losing her mind?  
Was that why she refused Lyrium, too, because it could make you lose your memories, and she'd had enough of that, already?  
"The mark, it makes you more. Mending, mastering. Yet you're miserable. You think it makes you less. More of a mess. Memories, moments missing. That's... not the mark, that's me."  
He erased that worry best as he could and started over. More careful this time. Spreading his efforts out instead of concentrating them. One attempt a day, no more. She didn't miss a few minutes at a time, like she had missed a whole sunset at once, when he had tried and failed again and again. It was slower this way, but better for her.

He warned her from the magebane.  
"Don't eat that. There's malice in it."  
"What?"  
"Bitter, bile at the back of his throat. She should have burned, like the others."  
“Someone spat in my food or something?”  
"It won't hurt you, but it will make it so you can't hurt them. Then they'll hurt you."  
When she did not know what to make of that, he simply took the bowl of stew away and made her forget that, too.

He warned her from her own, self-destructive tendencies.  
“The hurt sits in your chest, heavy on your heart. You turn it outward in a way that is safe to show.”  
“What are you talking about?”   
“You did it on purpose. They touch you not for the sake of touch. Pulling, pushing, prodding. There's always a purpose, so you had to give them one. You hurt inside, so you hesitate, then hurt outside. Not enough to hinder, just enough to heed. You cry red tears, so they see you wounded, but not weak. Only then do they touch you with care. It makes the hurt less, but worse. Thick like smoke in your lungs, threatening to choke.”

When that didn’t work, he tried to assure her, that the others did care, so she would not let herself get wounded, again.  
“It still hurts.”  
“Barely.”  
“No. Not your leg. In here.”  
He touched his fingertips to her chest in a fleeting motion, then pointed backward over his shoulder. “Out there.”  
Recounting the thoughts of the others, centred around their failure to protect her, made her feel only guilty, not better.  
Why was this so hard? Why couldn’t he figure this out?

She refused to let him in, to accept his clumsy efforts at drawing the hurt from her. And yet, her attitude began to shift gradually. Less hostile, more curious with each try.  
It might have to do with her talking to Solas about spirits and such.  
His own words still seemed as wrong as they had at the start. He resorted to gestures where his words failed, helping less than he liked but at least a little.

A raven's feather, left next to the empty cage, carrying memories of the past and hope for the future.  
A lute, because she missed music, and even though she felt clumsy plucking the strings it soothed her soul.  
Books to keep her occupied, and enough candles to read through the night, when she was too scared to sleep.  
An added pillow on her bed, that she could hug when she finally did try to sleep or bury her face in to muffle sobs of despair and groans of frustration.  
Little things she didn't question, that he left behind without making his involvement known.

The encounter with Envy had left her shaken.  
But while they all had been in her head, she’d trusted him. Somehow, he’d finally gotten through to her. Once they were separate, it was back to the way things were before, it seemed. The only difference was that she knew he was around, now. She remembered him, because once he’d thought he’d won her trust, he’d let her remember at least that much.

"Belavahni." He said, and she flinched, for he could not have known her nickname if he had not drawn it from either her own head, or that of Solas. The other elf had translated her signature when Cassandra had suspected some hidden meaning, but never spoken the name out loud. To them, she was just Lavellan, and that was, what Envy had called her.  
"Why is that so important to you? You think they can't really see you. So afraid, of losing yourself. But you're real. Already real. The titles, so many, like steam fogging up a window. You can't see the glass, but that doesn't mean it disappears."

"What do you want, Cole?" She sounded resigned.  
"I want to help."  
He cocked his head. "You're like me. Like I was. You need to be seen to feel real. I can see you."  
 **I can see you, Lavellan. All of you.**  
She curled in on herself, like a snail retreating into its shell.  
Cole sighed. "Forget that I said anything."  
And she did. 

He tried to give her what she needed.  
Someone to talk, he realized. Not him though, he would mess up again. Sifting through her mind best as he could, he settled for Cullen. It did not work out as intended – mostly, because she needed someone to talk to, but refused to actually do it. And she insisted on keeping her hurt. She even wanted back the one he had already taken, every failed attempt of his to comfort her.

He had never given back someone's memory before. He was not sure if he should. It seemed so important to her, though. Maybe it would help. He would have to try and see.  
He restored her memories and then left her alone to work through them.  
He would come back later. She had said that he could.

He tried again once she had calmed a bit.  
"Lethallan."  
Not her name, but another title. It struck another chord, her soul resonating so strong that her body trembled from the force of it.  
"That term indicates familiarity. Fondness. Friendship. Do you want to be friends?"  
She didn't answer.

"You're intrigued by Solas, yet you heed your old Keeper. You miss your clan, your friends. But her, most of all. You want to hear her voice raised in song. See her eyes crinkle in amusement. You want her to brush and braid your hair. To give you her advice. And a hug."  
He shook his head, sadly.  
"I can't give you that. I can't give you your new keeper."

You could give me a hug. She didn't say it out loud, but he heard, like he always did when he had to hear. When the hurt or need got so loud it drowned out the mark. So, he stepped up behind her, circling his arms around her.  
She started shaking in earnest then, fear and sorrow and longing warring inside.  
She could have broken free easily. His touch was feather light, their bodies barely in contact. Just enough for a hint of body heat through the fabric of their clothing.  
"You need a friend. Let me be your friend. Let me help."

He didn't understand why it was so hard with her, even with the mark. Why he kept failing, again and again.  
He’d thought he had earned her trust when she allowed him to stay after the encounter with the demon. He had not just looked into her head; he'd been in her head. Yet, when it came to her, he couldn't seem to find the right words.  
"Please", he whispered. "I just want to help." 

Somehow, she cracked. Started sobbing. And spoke one word, that should change everything.  
“Elgareth.”  
He gathered the meaning more from the feelings emanating from her, than the elvhen language itself, elgar for spirit, and eth for safe. Knew it to be true, when she turned toward him, flung her arms around his neck and buried her face against his chest, crying.  
Cole hugged her close, stroking her hair in wonder. "You... think I'm safe. You want me safe."

When she had cried her fill, she righted herself. Standing at arm’s length, but still holding on to his elbows, she muttered: "Creators, I must look horrible right now."  
Cole studied her face in earnest.  
"Skin blotchy, eyes swollen, hair in disarray, nose running. Does that qualify?"  
She laughed at that. The first, honest, heartfelt laugh since the conclave.  
"Thanks, Cole."  
He cocked his head again.  
"Does this mean we're friends? Lethallan?"

She wiped her nose on her sleeve and smiled at him.  
"I guess we are, Elgareth. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the way I treated you. I'm sorry I did not let you help sooner."  
"You're stubborn." Cole simply said.  
It startled another laugh out of her.  
"I'm stubborn? You follow your purpose with single-minded determination."  
“I’m a spirit.” He said, for it explained everything.  
“Yes.” She agreed and tried out her new nickname for him once more.  
“Elgareth.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> one of the many botched attempts of Cole to comfort Lavellan, this time from her perspective.

The boy blinked owlishly. He stretched out a hand towards her ever so slowly, giving her time to step back or turn away. Something, maybe defiance, kept her in place. She didn’t want to show any discomfort, didn’t want him to know how rattled she was by a human coming so close for no apparent reason.  
The tip of his index finger met her forehead right in the middle, where the raven was inked; the contact so light she could almost think it was just her imagination, fueled by anticipation.  
Then it ghosted down to the tip of her nose, following the red lines of the tail feathers.

Maybe he’d never seen vallaslin before. People had a tendency to trace them with their eyes, yet usually that felt invasive while him actually touching the markings somehow did not.  
She held his gaze, held herself a bit stiffly perhaps, but kept her voice low and level.  
“What are you doing?”  
He tilted his head slightly, middle and index finger skimming along one of her eyebrows as if to smooth it out.

“Touching you.” He stated the obvious. And yet he barely touched her at all, each move so carefully controlled it felt almost reverent.  
Her stomach lurched in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.  
“Why?”  
Three of his knuckles brushed first her temple, then her cheek and finally her jaw, grazing the corner of her lips on the way down.  
“Because you want me to.”  
She took a deep breath – in through the nose, out through the mouth – to prevent her jaw from clenching, given his presumption.

“I don’t.”  
That gave him a moment’s pause.  
Then the back of his hand circled beneath her chin, his fingers coming up to cup her one cheek while his thumb rested on the other, in the exact spot where a dimple would have shown if she had smiled.  
The gesture might have read possessive, except that it was still the same, barely-there touch. Except that he was still standing an arm’s length away. Except that he was still looking at her like that, wide-eyed and without guile.

“Not me, specifically.” He said, brushing his thumb over her lips so lightly that it tickled. His words choked the laughter in her throat, before it could reach, let alone leave, her mouth. “But you want someone to.”  
She turned her head, broke away from his touch and his gaze, the brunt of this softly spoken truth too much to bear.  
_Someone, yes._  
But not just anyone.  
“Someone I trust.” She reprimanded. He wasn't.  
  
And then it hit her – **what** he was, because of what he'd done. He’d mimicked their gestures: the way her brother used to tease her awake; the soothing hand of her hahren when she was upset; the affection of her keeper, given freely and frequently; the trembling tenderness of the craftmaster’s apprentice – easier to define him in relation to someone else, now that she no longer knew what they were to each other – in anticipation of a first kiss.  
He had not altered his face, body or voice to present her with a loved one, had not attempted – or managed? – a complete deception.  
Yet he had taken a crucial part of their interaction, made it his own.

She might have fallen for it, had he not tried to be all of them at once, might have taken it for kindness and…  
“The ones closest to you are so far away, and the ones nearby you won't let close. You have to. You don’t have to hurt anymore.”  
“I’ll take the hurt.”  
“I know. You keep your heart safe, but sore. The hurt, you weigh it, shift it, trade it. It won't get better like that.”  
“Get out.”  
And just like that, he was gone.  
Not only from her presence, but her memory as well.

**Author's Note:**

> tried my hand at Cole's point of view. I had a lot of fun coming up with alliterations, hope I did not overdo it. Probably needs a little streamlining.
> 
> In my worldstate, Cole came to Haven after the Breach opened. With all the pain concentrating there, we was drawn in and could not resist.


End file.
